Kanam movie review: Embryo to horror and thriller yet atmospheric

Kanam is a bilingual horror and thriller which is called ‘Diya’ in Tamil. Kanam is not as self aware about the tonality of the narrative because it tries to be poetic and thrilling which would never go together. It explores a rather serious theme of abortion and then how this 4 year old earnest child is portrayed as a ghost. There is something really scary about child ghosts because they don’t know the damage they can cause or the value of life hence can be showcased as quite shamanistic no mercy supernatural beings.

Perhaps Annabel works for the same reason because innocence turned towards demon is the most major loss to humanity especially when portrayed visually. Director Vijay was able to choreograph the scenes in such a way where child did not have to do anything dramatic but still conveyed the horrors to rock the bones with chills. Highly thought out wide shots of child taken from a distance keeps the viewer at certain disturbance about the intention of this demonic child. The cause to the revenge of this child is so spine chilling and it would be a really messed up world if every aborted child took to the dark side in after life.

Anyone would think ten times before forcibly aborting a child from a woman after watching this film. Though the intentions are noble, the thrills designed in the film rather seem to be paying homage to several horror film in a go. Conceptual superiority of this film is far ahead of the technical, which is also needed to give creative scares to the crowd. Performances of Sai and Naga in the film serve the scenes really well though Sai could have made a better arc out of her characters. Overall this film should ideally be seen by a large number of audience.